Goals for Randy

Over the past week I have been hard at work on a piece that examines what needs to be done to transform the Leafs into team with the potential to seriously contend and have prolonged success. While that wonâ€™t be available to read for a little while, it did get me thinking about the impact of the coaching change from Ron Wilson to Randy Carlyle.

Wilson had much more a free-wheeling, push the puck forward approach, and while he attempted to promote himself as a coach with a 200 foot coaching style, there seemed to be a consistent lack of defensive responsibility coupled with lacklustre positional play.

Randy Carlyle, much like every other coach in the league, also preaches a 200-foot game, but with tighter defensive systems, and increased responsibility for forwards. At the very least we will be seeing fewer neutral zone cross ice passes, and thereâ€™s a possibility that someone might cover the point when a defenseman pinches.

In the previous three seasons under Ron Wilson the Leafs have not dipped below 229 goals per season,. In the same time in Anaheim, Randy Carlyle has put up nearly identical numbers, but with arguably a more talented top six group.

Essentially an across the board decline, which isnâ€™t unexpected when the season goals for average was 2.82 and the time spent under Carlyle was 2.22.

What is also interesting is that the one area that consistently saw increases was the defensemen goals per game average. It’s a small sample size, but we can assume that Carlyle will be using the point more when on the attack.

In the spirit of the predictions from Gus Katsaros, I thought Iâ€™d run the Carlyle goals and points per game numbers against 82 games to see what their totals would look like under Carlyle.

There are a few things worth noting first.

An 18 game sample under a new coach doesnâ€™t mean too much, but in some cases points to who may have a harder time adjusting to the new style

I have removed all players who only had a couple of games under Carlyle. The lowest game total included is Nik Kulemin at 6 games, and given his unfortunate season last year heâ€™ll be a wild card on all point prediction posts.

I lied, I included Joffrey Lupul who only played 2 games under Carlyle in Toronto, but I used his goals and point per game numbers from his last season in Anaheim under Carlyle.

Presumably swapping in James van Riemsdyk and Jay McClement for Matthew Lombardi and Jay Rosehill gives you a team that can put up similar goal totals to the what the Leafs finished with last season.

82 Game Projection

G

P

Tyler Bozak

18

46

Mike Brown

0

0

Tim Connolly

14

36

Cody Franson

9

9

Matt Frattin

16

27

Jake Gardiner

14

50

Mikhail Grabovski

26

46

Carl Gunnarsson

10

15

Phil Kessel

23

64

Mike Komisarek

0

5

Nikolai Kulemin

0

14

John-Michael Liles

14

23

Matthew Lombardi

5

19

Joffrey Lupul*

35

50

Clarke MacArthur

5

46

Dion Phaneuf

14

27

Jay Rosehill

0

0

David Steckel

5

22

So now that youâ€™ve seen the table itâ€™s worth recognizing that itâ€™s unlikely that Clarke MacArthur will have such a poor goal output, and Cody Franson will probably get an assist or two at some point as well. What may be somewhat encouraging is that both Matt Frattin and Jake Gardiner thrived under Carlyle in their short exposure.

The Leafs still havenâ€™t fully adjusted to a Carlyle system, however. In fact the Leafs goals against spiked from 3.21 to 3.55 in the final 18 games. Some of that does fall on goaltending, and both Reimer and Scrivens fared better than Gustavsson and Rynnas.

Now some links…

Forwards and NHLE- 2012 DraftScott Reynolds at NHL Numbers takes a look at the 2012 Draft NHL Equivalencies. While I remain unsold on the metric for predicting what a player could do in the NHL, I think it has a lot of value in standardizing point production across several leagues. Connor Brown has the highest NHLE of the Leafs Draftees, and heâ€™s listed at 37

Team Canada 2012If Olympic Hockey were to be played today who would be on Team Canada? Itâ€™s hard to argue against this roster, but P.K. Subban swapped out for Mike Green is the one easy change to spot. The Team USA roster is here.

Jon survived in the wild for several years but now lives in captivity. His diet consists of meats and grains. He is on twitter dot com. Visit him at twitter.com/yakovmironov or his oft-neglected site yakovmironov.blogspot.ca